


On the way to Odense

by lwise2019



Series: Mikkel's Story [31]
Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:34:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23380261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lwise2019/pseuds/lwise2019
Summary: The trip to Odense took a couple of weeks, so what happened in that time?
Series: Mikkel's Story [31]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1536739
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	On the way to Odense

“Big guy, let's go check that library.”

Mikkel was pleased at the request, thinking that Sigrun had begun to recognize his abilities as a soldier, but his hopes were quickly dashed.

“The scout says the door's jammed and he couldn't open it, so I need you and your crowbar. Oh, and he says there's a troll inside. I'll deal with that.”

He made no complaint, simply retrieving the crowbar from the cabinet where it was stored and offering an “after you” gesture, but inside he sighed with disappointment. Well, at least she valued him for something more than his ability to cook inedible sludge and scrub the laundry.

“Windows intact,” Sigrun observed as they approached, “good sign.” The windows were the ancient nine-light style, and the small thick panes had survived their decades of neglect. The door, on the other hand, was swollen and jammed, and it took some effort even for Mikkel to force it open. Inside, they found an entryway with a hallway leading off on the left and double doors straight ahead. From the hallway they could hear a rather squishy thudding as something threw itself against a solid surface. Crowbar raised, Mikkel cautiously led the way down the hall.

To their right was a blank wall, the pictures formerly hung there having fallen and smashed; to their left were a pair of restrooms, then the door behind which the grossling was mindlessly trying to escape. The creature's problem was immediately evident: the door was a good, solid wooden door which opened inwards.

Timing his actions carefully, Mikkel twisted the knob and kicked the door open exactly as the troll started to back up for another run. The monster, looking something like a giant spider with tentacles rather than jointed legs, went flying across the room and was immediately pounced upon by Sigrun, who stabbed each lump which looked like it might contain the brain. The third stab hit the brain; the thing's limbs shot straight out and then went limp. The troll-hunter stabbed it a few more times to be sure, then rose.

Mikkel, meanwhile, had charged in, crowbar ready, then stopped to study the situation. The room was a shambles, well coated in grossling slime as far up as the troll could reach, which was somewhat above the tall Dane's head. The creature had not been strong enough to tear apart the heavy wooden desk, but it had torn down the shelves formerly on the walls and reduced the other furnishings to piles of debris. There was nowhere in the room where another monster could hide, not even the ceiling, which he could clearly see in the dim light that seeped through the grimy windows. Thus, when Sigrun stood, dripping dagger raised, he simply shrugged and gestured at the door, and the two departed, leaving the troll to its long-delayed rest.

The solid wooden double doors out of the lobby were also jammed, and as they opened inward, Mikkel had to slam his shoulder against them several times in an inadvertent imitation of the now-deceased grossling. Once the doors were open, the problem was very evident: much of the roof had fallen in.

“Dammit! The twig said this was in good shape!”

“This damage wasn't visible from the outside,” Mikkel pointed out reasonably.

Sigrun growled something inarticulate – she hated it when he was oh-so-reasonable – then waved dismissively. “Okay, we're here. Look around. Maybe there's _something_.”

The collapsing roof had brought down most of the stacks in a splintered heap, and weather and small animals had made a thorough mess of the fallen books. There was clearly nothing to be salvaged there. Nevertheless, well in the back of the large room, they found shelves that had not collapsed, with some books on the top shelves still in relatively good shape. Sigrun greeted them with indifference –“Books are books, let's take them” – and Mikkel with excitement. They were science books!

By the standards of his time, the Year 90 of the Rash, Mikkel was a well-educated man, mainly self-taught through reading everything he could get his hands on, but his science education was largely limited to biology, mostly as it pertained to medicine. Few other sciences had survived the frantic efforts to save not just civilization but the human race itself, and once some parts of the population were secure enough to resume research, nothing but the defeat of the Rash was important enough to study.

It had never occurred to Mikkel, nor did it occur to him now, to wonder why the books that embodied all other sciences had come to be burned “as fuel” by the survivors in the desperate early days. His understandable pride in his own people left him with a blindspot that prevented him from perceiving that, not only the Icelanders but all of the survivors had deliberately burned science books in a revulsion against technology spurred by their terror and horror.

Carrying his books as priceless treasures, Mikkel followed Sigrun as she stomped and kicked her way out of the library, muttering under her breath about incompetent scouts. A short hike through the snow brought them back to the tank, where Tuuri and Reynir were playing with the kitten in the snow and Emil stood guard, rifle slung ready and one hand on his dagger. Mikkel was pleased to see that Emil was scanning his surroundings rather than watching the others and that his tracks in the snow showed repeated patrols around the tank. The Swede acknowledged the returning adventurers with a wave, and the other two scooped up the kitten and climbed into the tank. The non-immunes had been grateful for the opportunity to be outside in the unseasonably warm weather, but everyone was quite ready to move on.

The two scavengers clambered into the back of the tank, segregated from the non-immunes, and stored the latest books. Their second sets of outer garments were already waiting for them, so they pulled off their befouled clothing and changed even as the tank started moving. A couple of bangs on the forward wall and a shout to the others in front, and the two jumped back out, locked the door and jogged forward to enter the main compartment. 

Lalli's snares were empty at the campsite, so they endured a meatless supper with minimal complaint. As life went in the Silent World, it had been a good day.

* * *

The blizzard started that night. Lalli went out scouting around midnight as usual but returned early and ordered Tuuri to turn the tank to face east; he then raided the back compartment for some of their large supply of rope. In the morning, the others found what he had done: a rope tied to the tanks treads led through the blinding snow to their latrine; attached to it by loose loops were two “leashes” to which the latrine's visitor and an escort could fasten themselves so as not to have to hold onto the rope. The snow was falling so thickly that one could get lost just a few feet from the tank.

It was clearly impossible to drive under these conditions, so the team spent the next two days in the tank but for necessary visits to the latrine and, in the case of the immunes, occasional careful trips to the back compartment, the first made by Mikkel with one shoulder firmly pressed against the tank at every step, and the subsequent trips made by the others following a rope which he had rigged similar to Lalli's. The back compartment offered the immunes the opportunity to escape the close confines and echoing noises of the main compartment. Tuuri and Reynir, on the other hand, could only retreat to the radio compartment or sit in the driver's seat and stare helplessly at the snow.

Without the kitten to play with and the opportunity to escape for a hour or so at a time, Mikkel thought they might have gone mad in those days. He included a can of tuna in every meal – at least they could have something (somewhat) tasty – reluctantly concluding that he could not spare any cookies even for morale purposes. His stash was running very low and he needed what remained for purposes of bribery. Tuuri and Reynir, and even Emil and Mikkel at times, played cards. Sigrun regarded this pastime with amused disbelief, and Lalli caught up on his sleep.

When the storm finally blew itself out, they all, even the non-immunes, came out to marvel at the results. On the left (north) side of the tank a drift reached almost to the roof, while the rest of the tank was buried up to the top of its treads, but for where they had kept paths somewhat open to the latrine and the back compartment. Downed branches stuck up out of the snow here and there, and Mikkel and Emil immediately began gathering them for fuel, as the tank had burned quite a bit keeping them warm. Water was no issue; once the non-immunes were safely inside, Sigrun and Lalli gathered snow nearby while the kitten sat and shivered on top of a tread.

With the tank reprovisioned, Mikkel prepared another unpleasant meal and Lalli pulled a pair of skis from the back compartment and set forth to scout by daylight. By the time he returned, it was getting dark and there was no possibility of continuing.

* * *

The tank was too heavy to ride on top of the snow, the way the passengers could walk on top with the snowshoes they pulled from storage in the back compartment, but it was able to push its way through slowly with the aid of a crude snowplow which Mikkel and Emil assembled from logs under Tuuri's direction. Even with this assistance, it moved more slowly than people walking alongside. As the driver, Tuuri couldn't join the walkers, but the others, even Reynir, took advantage of the opportunity to stretch their legs. Reynir, of course, walked next to the open door of the tank with the kitten on his shoulder and one of the immunes beside him.

That first day, they made it into another town where they investigated a private dwelling identified as a possible book source by the team in Sweden; they did indeed find a dozen more intact books and, to Mikkel's satisfaction and everyone else's later pleasure, a box of salt. Camping only a few hundred meters out of the town, they worried about following grosslings and set guards, but they were again undisturbed.

The next day they moved into open fields where the snow was less deep, largely blown away, and Sigrun nodded sagely, observing, “That blizzard was directed at us. But we are undefeated!” She ignored Mikkel's indulgent smile and the worried looks turned on her by Tuuri and Emil, instead taking their map and trying to work out how close they were to the next possible book source.

And so they continued slowly on their way to Odense for another week. There was, after all, no hurry since they could not be rescued for weeks anyway, so they detoured as necessary, forded streams as necessary, and stopped to scavenge books when possible, all with a minimum of complaints. The snow began to melt as the weather warmed, but they knew there would be more snow before the winter finally ended.

Once reached, the major roads which they had thought to use proved impassable, not because of neglect, though that was a problem, but because they were filled with the decaying relics of uncountable vehicles, abandoned (or not) in the final traffic jam as the Old World died. The tank could, in theory, simply drive over a small car or even a larger one that had collapsed into debris, but it would surely have suffered irreparable damage if they had tried to drive over an entire road full of vehicles. They were forced to grind along beside the road, with the immunes jumping out every so often to remove the worst obstacles they faced.

The biggest problem was the major bridge: though it had not collapsed, it too was filled with decaying vehicles. The river was not frozen and while the tank was waterproof to a point, it was not balanced for floating in flowing water and would likely turn turtle and sink if they tried to “swim” it across. They had to get across the bridge itself.

After studying the problem for a bit, they concluded that there was nothing for it but to send all four immunes forward to throw over the side anything they could lift, and then use the tank with their primitive snowplow to force the larger debris out of the way. This was a nerve-wracking undertaking, as not all the vehicles had been abandoned, and among the many skeletons there were half a dozen trolls that invariably charged exactly when the workers had their hands full.

Lalli was invaluable in these days. Though he was not strong, he seemed always to be the first to notice trolls and several times killed them himself before the others had their weapons out. No one was injured by trolls, but everyone suffered cuts, bruises, and strains, and Mikkel feared for some time that Emil might have broken bones in his foot by dropping an unidentifiable piece of debris on it in his haste to grab his dagger. Well-bandaged, the foot proved painful but intact, and Emil hardly whined at all about being called out to work again the next day.

In the end it took three days to get the tank across the bridge, and they felt lucky to have managed it that quickly. They'd had to post guards and deal with trolls both nights, fortunately just one troll at a time and easily heard approaching, for the loose debris rattled and crashed with every movement.

Though he had been working with the others every day and had not had a chance to scout at all, once they were on the other side and off the road, Lalli ran ahead and returned an hour later with news that he had found an acceptable camping spot. It was dark by the time they reached it but they nevertheless took the time to gather wood by moonlight and flashlight and to hook up a hose to the water supply, for they'd had no water for half a day and the tank was almost empty of fuel. If the arduous journey across the bridge had taken any longer, they would have had to cross on foot and carry back fuel to keep the tank moving.

Exhausted, the four immunes collapsed in their respective bunks and left the non-immunes to keep watch. Fortunately there were no attacks during the night.


End file.
